


Make a Wish

by Olive_the_Olive



Series: DCMK Magica [1]
Category: Magic Kaitou, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Gen, Magical Girls, this could get dark, what am i saying it will get dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-22
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-05 20:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Olive_the_Olive/pseuds/Olive_the_Olive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't something she had to think about.  Aoko knew what to wish for as soon as she heard the offer.  Not that there weren't other things she wanted – everyone had things they wished for!  But this was the wish that she was willing to fight for.  Kid deserved to grow mold in a jail cell, and she deserved to have her father back.  </p>
<p>Also, it wasn't every day that you were asked to be a magical girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Wish

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very excited to be posting the first installment of the first story in my Detective Conan/Magic Kaito/Madoka Magica crossover, which I've been working on ever since... Spring Break. (I don't like posting parts to things a moment before I'm sure that I'll be continuing them, and that means writing ahead.) Once the other stories are up, you can probably read them in any order. Just keep in mind that they all reference each other and overlap like crazy, so you may find out what happens in one story before finishing that one. Actually, you may find out what happens in one story before that one is even finished.
> 
> Oh, and I should warn you that the series will include lots of people with feelings for other people, hopefully without descending into too much teenage angst. I've decided not to tag any relationships, however, because they mostly won't be actual relationships, and there's a lot of them. But just keep that in mind if you absolutely hate reading about silly kids with feelings.
> 
> Thanks to Eialyne for being a ~~lab rat~~ beta.

“Any wish at all?”

“ _Whatever your heart desires most,_ ” said Kyubey. 

“I wish for my dad to catch the Kaitou Kid at his next heist.”

It wasn't something she had to think about. Aoko knew what she wanted as soon as she heard the offer. Not that there weren't other things she wanted – everyone had things they wished for! But this was the wish that she was willing to fight for. Kid deserved to grow mold in a jail cell, and she deserved to have her father back. 

Also, it wasn't every day that you were asked to be a magical girl.

Kyubey raised his long ears, holding them out as if he wanted to shake her hand with them. It looked so ridiculous, she almost laughed, but she felt a warmth and a light in her chest, and a sharp pain that vanished as quickly as it had come. A glowing blue light emerged from her chest. She gasped, and reached for it, not hearing what Kyubey was saying to her. All she wanted was that blue light.

As she touched it, the light solidified into a sparkling gem, bright as turquoise but slightly translucent, and still glowing. It was like the whole sky has been caught, pulled into the shape of an egg, and set in gold. It was beautiful.

“ _-your soul gem!_ ” Kyubey was speaking. “ _It's the source of your magical power, and will allow you to fight witches._ ”

Aoko curled her fingers around the gem. The glow seeped through her fingers. Her heart felt light, like an expanding balloon.

“Alright,” she said. “Then we'll fight some witches!”

Kyubey made a cute noise and flicked his tail. He reminded Aoko of a fluffy white cat, but it was also quite clear that whatever Kyubey was, he was not a cat. He was cuter than one. Aoko laughed and picked him up, squishing him to her. He squirmed around in her arms and scrambled onto her shoulder.

“ _You'll have to find one first,_ ” he told her. “ _Your soul gem will be able to detect them if you're nearby! _”__

“So we're scouring the city!” she decided. “Like supernatural detectives!”

“ _Well, I guess, if you want to put it that way... _”__

She scratched behind one of his ears. “That's just how I think about things. I grew up around cops.”

“ _Your father is one. _”__

Aoko looked out the window. It was already late afternoon, but her father wouldn't be back until late, so she wouldn't be missed if she went witch-hunting. On the other hand, she had a lot of homework that she should be doing.

On the other hand, _witch-hunting._

“Yeah. But _he's_ not a magical girl,” she said gleefully. “C'mon. Let's be heroes.”

That first night she fought what Kyubey called a familiar. They were monsters that hid themselves behind a magical barrier so that ordinary people couldn't see them. Kyubey explained that a familiar broke off from an existing witch, and would eventually become the same witch that it came from.

“Like a clone?” Aoko had asked. 

“ _Yes! Think of a familiar as being like a cutting from a plant. It can eventually grow its own roots and grow into another plant._ ” Except that familiars matured not by growing roots, but by killing people.

This had all made sense at the time. She had thought she was well-prepared. Kyubey had told her everything about witches and familiars as they tracked a weak pulse of magical energy around the city. Once she was fighting, however, she realized how theoretical the conversation had been. Within the barrier, nothing made sense. Everything was a topsy-turvy circus of sound and motion, painted in bright, clashing colors. And she felt like just another part of it, in her sky-blue tunic, silver belt, and silver sandals, with a short, ornamented cape around one shoulder and armor covering the other. Her soul gem gleamed from where it was set into her armor, now in the shape of a teardrop, pointing out, down her arm, to her weapon, which was an elegant silver trident.

“Are witches this ugly?” she asked as she stabbed at the familiar, which looked more like a bright orange caterpillar than anything else. Except that caterpillars weren't that big, and they didn't move like that, fast as a bullet train, smooth as a snake, and unpredictable as a leaf on a windy day.

“ _Witches are considerably more grotesque,_ ” answered Kyubey from a safe distance away. The caterpillar lunged at Aoko, and she whacked it away with the long staff of her trident. “ _That isn't my own opinion, of course. I don't share the same aesthetic standards as humans,_ ” added Kyubey. “ _It's just that every magical girl I've worked with thought that the witches were far more unappealing._ ”

Aoko threw her trident at the familiar. It completely missed, and sank into the ground in front of it. The familiar stretched itself, squeezing through the prongs and going for her legs. She leaped away, pulling trident after trident out of thin air and sending them flying at the orange monstrosity, but it dodged every time. The weapons sunk into the ground one after the other, forming a row of silver poles sticking into the air.

“If it would just,” – she grunted – “Stay!” – she heaved another trident – “Still!” The trident embedded itself in a wall just the color of vomit. The familiar, meanwhile, kept dodging, kept coming after her. In a strike of either genius or desperation or both, she tore the little silver cape off of her shoulders, and threw it at the creature. The loose weave expanded and stiffened, transforming in to a sturdy, fine mesh. The beads and baubles which studded the border of the cloth swelled to the size of baseballs, and hit the ground with a satisfying series of clanks and thuds. The net covered the familiar, trapping it. The thing struggled, but the more it twisted, the heavier the net seemed to become. Aoko hefted a trident into an offensive position. The weapon balanced perfectly in her hands. The metal was smooth against her palms.

She hit the familiar squarely, impaling the thing through its middle. It withered and shriveled into nothing, and the disorienting kaleidoscope of light, color, and sound did the same, until all that was left was the same empty little street where she had found the familiar. She stood on a perfectly normal street on a perfectly normal evening in the most ridiculous clothes imaginable. As she calmed down and her heart rate slowed, she began to feel self-conscious in her sandals and tunic and cape (which had returned to her shoulder, as light and flawless as ever). She probably looked like some sort of cosplayer. No was around to see her, though, which made it a bit of a moot point.

“ _That was good!_ ” said Kyubey. “ _You didn't have much trouble with that familiar at all!_ ”

Aoko wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic. He didn't sound like it. Everything Kyubey said always sounded incredibly earnest. She thought that sarcasm might be beyond him.

“I don't know about that,” said Aoko. Watching her soul gem shine as she transformed back into normal clothes. “He was pretty obnoxious.”

“ _I just mean that I think it's very likely that you'll survive your first fight with a witch. And that's good for me. It would be a waste if you died._ ”

Aoko snapped her head up to look at him. He looked the same as ever. But she got the sense that maybe he was joking after all. She revised her earlier assessment of him. 

“You're heartless!” she accused.

“ _I wouldn't say that. It's just that I don't experience emotion the same way you do,_ ” said Kyubey. “ _We have different standards when it comes to compassion, and when it's acceptable to show reactions such as empathy._ ” He leaped into her arms, and she caught him, surprised.

“Well, that is very sad,” she reflected. “But that doesn't give you an excuse to be an asshole!” She held him in place with one arm and gave him the tiniest of noogies. He squirmed and yelped and apologized, so she stopped and just hugged him.

Her phone beeped. She clutched Kyubey to her with one hand and fished in her jacket pocket with the other. It was a message from Kaito. He wanted to know what problems had been assigned for homework. She sighed and checked the time before putting her phone away. She had the assignment written down at home.

“My dad will be home in an hour or two,” she told Kyubey, her feet already carrying her home, retracing their steps all the way back to her front door. Once they got there, she made herself a late dinner, eating half of it while she was cooking, and giving Kyubey some of the scraps. She started her homework a little after eight, and remembered to send Kaito a list of the problems around the same time that she started them herself.

Three hours later, her father barged into the dining room, all but foaming at the mouth.

“We'll get him this time, you can be sure of it!”

Aoko looked up from some questions on the reading. Her heart beat high in her chest.

“What's up?”

Her father flashed a feral grin. “Kid announced his next target. It's part of that new exhibit at the museum – the ancient treasures of whatever-it-was. I've been working on security measures all day. We'll get that damn thief this time. I can feel it!”

Aoko smiled. “I'm sure you will, Dad.”

“Just don't jinx it!” he laughed, but stopped abruptly, and looked at her like he had only just noticed she was there. “Aoko, it's late. Why are you still up? You have school tomorrow.”

“I had homework,” she told him.

“Ah.” He hesitated, and nodded. “Right. Well, I'm going to go to bed.” He left the room, loosening his tie. Aoko heard the faucet running and the sound of him brushing his teeth. She looked at Kyubey, who was curled up peacefully on the table. His head had been tucked into his paws when her father came in, but now he was alert, head up and ears cocked towards the sound of running water.

“Can he not see you?” she whispered.

“ _No,_ ” said Kyubey, looking up at her. “ _And he can't hear me either, since I'm speaking directly into your mind. If you want you can do the same thing._ ”

That was convenient. Aoko tried it, thinking, “ _Hello,_ ” as hard as she could.

“ _Hello,_ ” said Kyubey.

“ _It worked!_ ” she thought, excited by her new ability. “ _What other powers do I have?_ ”

“ _You can do pretty much anything, if you put your mind to it,_ ” said Kyubey. “ _You figured that out today. If you think you can do it, then you probably can. Most magical girls stick to a few abilities and weapons that they know how to use well, but the ones who have been doing this for a while know how to do everything and use any weapon, regardless of how much magical potential they started with. They can be kind of scary, they're so powerful!_ ”

Aoko scrawled a stupid answer to a more stupid question and thought, “ _Do you know anyone like that?_ ”

“ _A couple,_ ” said Kyubey. Aoko wondered what they were like.

“ _Will my wish really come true?_ ” 

Kyubey bounced his head in a tiny nod. “ _I've never seen a girl's wish fail to happen. Yours isn't going to be the first one._ ”

Aoko tried and failed to fight a maybe slightly vindictive smile from creeping onto her face. 

“ _I can't wait._ ”


	2. The Heist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it's been a while since I updated this. Oops? I would say that my update schedule will get better, but who even knows if it will. Not me! Enjoy, and please leave me comments and critique. I am always looking to improve my writing and my stories. Thank you to Eialyne and Margaret for being beta-readers.

Aoko examined her ring finger. There was a mark on her fingernail – a blue teardrop, the same as her soul gem when she had transformed. The real thing was hanging around her neck, underneath her uniform. It had amused her for several minutes that morning, changing it into different shapes and pendants, before settling on a simple ring on a light chain. It was comforting to have it against her heart, like it belonged there. And it made her feel pretty bad-ass, too. She was like a secret agent, fighting evil her classmates could only dream of.

She smiled to herself, wondering how Kaito would react if he knew she was now a caped superhero by night. She glanced over to his desk, and was surprised to see that it was empty, although he had left his lunch. He had been there minutes ago. She must have really been zoning out to not notice him leave. She didn't see him anywhere else in the room, either.

“ _Hey, do you know where Kaito went?_ ” she asked silently. Kyubey was curled up on her lap, and looked to be asleep, but he opened his eyes immediately.

“ _I wasn't looking, sorry,_ ” said Kyubey. Aoko apologized for disturbing him, and he closed his eyes again.

She returned to eating her lunch, which had been sitting lonely and forgotten on the desk in front of her. It wasn't like Kaito wasn't allowed to disappear when he wanted to. It was lunch. Although it wasn't like it would have stopped him if one of their teachers had been in the middle of a lecture.

“What are you thinking about?” said Keiko from right beside her, lunch in hand. She sat down in an empty chair (which belonged to the girl who sat directly behind Kaito) and set her bento box upon the desk, cracking the lid open.

“Just wondering where Kaito ran off to,” said Aoko, lifting a bit of curried potato to her mouth.

“Akako dragged him out of the room,” said Keiko disdainfully. Aoko nearly dropped her chopsticks. She fumbled a bit to keep the curry from falling out of her mouth.

“What?” she choked around her food.

“She looked really serious, too.” Keiko looked hesitant, but continued quietly, cautiously. “Hey, do you think that maybe... Akako _likes_ Kaito?”

“I'm pretty sure she does.” She had said as much on the ski trip.

“Really?” Keiko's eyes widened behind her glasses. “Oh no, Aoko, I'm so sorry...”

“It's fine!” Aoko assured her. She went back to eating. “I don't care who Kaito dates.”

“Well, okay. But you know it's okay if it's not fine, right?”

“Yes, I know that! I seriously don't care!”

“But I was so sure! You two would be such a cute couple,” Keiko lamented. She was a bit of a gossip sometimes, and maybe enjoyed speculating on who was with who a little too much. Akako had already thrown a wrench in a lot of potential relationships when she had transferred to their school in February. Keiko didn't like her very much.

“Different subject,” said Aoko swiftly as Kaito pushed open the door and entered the room.

“Oh, uh... can you believe how hard that math test was? I just know I did terrible.”

“You probably did okay. What did you get for that question on conic sections?”

“I don't even remember.”

Kaito slid back into his seat. 

“Hey,” said Keiko.

“Where did you go?” asked Aoko.

“Bathroom,” he said.

Aoko glanced at Keiko, who merely rolled her eyes. “Bullshit,” Aoko shot back. “What did Akako have to say to you?”

“Nothing that you have to worry about,” he told her. Behind Kaito, Keiko's eyebrows were jumping rope. Aoko felt her face heat up slightly.

At that moment, the door slid open, and Akako stepped gracefully back into the classroom. Every boy in the room, with the exception of Kaito, turned to look at her for a moment before returning to their food and conversation. Akako looked immensely displeased, even dangerous, and as beautiful as ever. She flashed a look of pure ice at Aoko before gliding back to her desk, where she was instantly surrounded by her usual fanclub.

Aoko looked back at Kaito, who didn't seem to have noticed anything, and Keiko, who looked positively ecstatic. She was mouthing “you won” from behind Kaito's back. Aoko decided to drop the subject.

“What did you think of the math test?” she asked.

“What?” Kaito's face cleared. “Oh, right. I probably failed,” he said, perfectly nonchalant.

“That's what happens when you don't study,” said Aoko, rather hypocritically, considering that she had spent much of her study time the previous night fighting that familiar.

“Perhaps Kuroba has trouble finding the time to study. I'm sure he's very busy in the evenings,” said a smooth voice from behind them. Kaito's face instantly froze itself into a look of irritation. 

“What do you want?” he asked Hakuba, who also looked uncharacteristically annoyed.

“Nothing! I just thought you might like to know that once again, the Kaitou Kid has scheduled a heist to exactly coincide with the dates I will be out of town. It's almost like he's afraid of something.”

“Maybe Kid just doesn't schedule his life around you,” said Kaito, pointedly looking at his food instead of Hakuba.

“There's a heist?” asked Keiko excitedly. “When?”

“This weekend,” said Aoko. Kaito and Hakuba both looked at her. She explained the obvious. “My dad told me.”

“I just didn't think the date was public information yet,” said Hakuba.

“Well, you just told us about it,” she pointed out. “Anyone could've figured it out if they remembered that you were going to be gone this weekend. You mentioned it last week.”

“Very true,” he admitted. “I did let the cat out of the bag, didn't I? I somehow doubt it really mattered, in present company.” He was looking very intently at Kaito, who was steadfastly refusing to acknowledge his existence.

“Hakuba, did you want to sit with us?” asked Keiko.

“I would be delighted,” he answered, and took the seat on the other side of Kaito, who did not look happy about this. “Still, it is strange that so many recent heists have occurred while I was away.”

“You're always away,” said Kaito. “Where are you going this time? To meet the president of France?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” said Hakuba. “I'm just going up north to see some friends of the family.”

“Are these rich and influential friends of the family?” asked Kaito. “Or people you actually give a shit about?”

“Can't they be both?” said Hakuba, smiling pleasantly. Conversation continued from topic to topic. They talked about Kid and trips they had taken out of the country and Kid and the most recent episode of an anime that Aoko and Kaito watched and Kid and the math test and whether or not Hakuba was going to catch Kid. This last part was mostly Hakuba arguing that he would definitely catch the thief the next time he was able to make it to a heist, and Kaito insisting that he never would and insinuating that he was incompetent. Aoko eventually got fed up with it and told them that they were both wrong because it was going to be her father who caught Kid, and could they please talk about something else for a change?

Hakuba started telling them about Paris.

 

With the days full of school, and the evenings full of wtich-hunting, the weekend arrived quickly. Aoko killed two more familiars, but couldn't find any witches. Kyubey said that familiars were more common around the city because a lot of magical girls didn't bother fighting them until they grew into witches. Aoko had assumed that this was because the witches were more dangerous, and needed to be dealt with first, but Kyubey said that wasn't it. Witches dropped a “grief seed” that could be used to recharge your magic. He also said they had another purpose, but he didn't say what it was.

Kyubey didn't always accompany her to school, but he always showed up in the evenings to go witch-hunting with her.

“ _I can't help you directly,_ ” he explained. “ _But I can give you advice and help you in that way._ ”

So she was disappointed but understanding when, on the way to the museum with Keiko on Saturday evening, Kyubey informed her that there was somewhere he needed to be right away.

“ _I'm sorry that I can't be here to see your wish granted!_ ”

“ _That's okay. I'll see you tomorrow though, right?_ ” Aoko asked silently, trying to hold a conversation while listening to a story Keiko was telling her at the same time. She hefted her anti-Kid sign higher on her right shoulder, while Kyubey perched on her left.

“ _Probably. But it depends. Someone else might need me more right now._ ” He sprung off of her shoulder and onto the ground.

“ _Oh. Right. Well, I'll see you later,_ ” thought Aoko as he bounded away into the shadows of an alleyway.

“ _Until next time._ ”

“Aoko?”

“What?” she said guiltily. She'd completely lost track of what Keiko was saying.

“Where should we watch the heist from?”

“Um, how about over there?” She pointed to the fountain, centered in the plaza in front of the museum. It wasn't that close to the front of the crowd or the entrance to the museum, but the fountain's edge was wide enough to sit or stand on. Aoko jumped on top of the concrete and stuck out a hand to help Keiko up. It was a good spot. While standing they could see over everyone's heads to the museum and all the officers walking purposefully around the perimeter. Aoko held her sign high. 

“Once again, you're the only one here who doesn't like Kid,” said Keiko, poking her playfully in the ribs.

“Am not! I'm just the only one who made a sign!” She squirmed away from Keiko's pokes.

“Weird, normally you're more ticklish than that,” observed Keiko.

“I am a recovering victim of tickle-itis,” Aoko informed her.

“Ticklitis?”

“Spontaneous Ticklish Reactive Syndrome.”

“How do you think Kid will escape?” wondered Keiko abruptly.

“Maybe he won't!” said Aoko, as self-importantly as she could muster. “Or are you just assuming my dad won't do his job?”

“Sorry! But you have to admit, Kid does usually get away pretty easily!” said Keiko. Aoko admitted nothing, and they waited.

Keiko checked her watch. “Five minutes until it starts!” she announced.

“Good, my arms are getting tired,” Aoko joked. They weren't really, which was strange. Maybe spearing all those familiars was making her arms stronger.

“Just hang in there,” said Keiko seriously. “I know you can make it through this.”

Aoko grinned. Could she ever! Something pulsed near her heart. It took her only a moment to realize that it was her soul gem. She could feel the waves of magic flowing through it, in a distinct pattern. The smile faded from her face.

“Oh. Actually, I have to go take care of something.” She hopped off of the fountain.

“What? You can't, you're going to miss it!”

“Sorry! I'll be right back. Can you hold this for me?” She shoved the sign into Keiko's hands, and took off through the growing crowd. She pulled her soul gem out of her shirt as she ran, cupping it in her hands and feeling the flow of magic, the way a pulse seemed to enter the gem from one direction and leave from the other, just like she had learned while tracking familiars. She ran towards the source. The pattern was so strong and clear, more so than any of the signals she had tracked before. She wasn't sure what that meant. She tore around one corner and then another, and found herself by a fire escape in an alley only a block from the museum. A symbol pulsed in the air above her. She jumped and pulled herself onto the fire escape. She stood and faced the portal, which looked a little like a clock face, except with strange symbols and pictures instead of numbers around its edge. The magic coming off of this door was stronger than any familiar. This was a witch.

She had kind of hoped that Kyubey would be around the first time she fought a witch. But she couldn't count on that. And she couldn't let this witch go, not with so many people nearby. They were all in danger right now, and she was the only person who could help. She took a deep breath, set her soul gem into her armor as it appeared, and walked proudly into the witch's labyrinth. Like a hero. A gladiator.

The labyrinth was huge. Not wide, though; it was tall. A flight of stairs wound around the walls, going up and up until it was obscured by the mess of gears and springs that filled the place. Everything was constantly in motion here, turning and pushing and pulling. Not really sure what else to do, Aoko started to run up the stairs in front of her. 

A gear flew out of the clockwork. Aoko watched it, fascinated, as it careened towards the wall. It landed on the stairs and started to roll down them towards her. It thundered at her, getting closer and closer. She side-stepped it, striking it with her trident. It wobbled and fell off the stairs, plummeting down the bottomless shaft. Aoko watched the clockwork as she continued to climb. It served as excellent camouflage. She was unsure which components were part of the machine and which were capable of attacking her.

As she continued her ascent, it quickly became apparent that all of them were.

She reached the top on pure luck and determination, only to find that the door out was somewhat inaccessible. It was circular, set right in the middle of the ceiling. The stairs didn't even go all the way up. She stopped, staring, and a spring buried itself in the wall next to her head. She jerked away from it and kept moving, fending off wave after wave of gears spinning towards her, heavy and deadly. She had no idea how to get to the middle of the tower with nothing to stand on. But she had an idea about how to get to the ceiling itself. She drove the trident she was carrying into the wall. She pulled out another trident, hit a gear away from her, and embedded it in the wall as well, a little higher than the other. She pulled herself up the wall and stood on the handles of the tridents, and repeated the process. 

It was slow going, but eventually she was high enough that she could touch the ceiling with her fingertips. When she did, the door glowed slightly, and moved, spiraling outward until it came to a stop directly above her. It opened, and she hoisted herself through it. Once she was through, it closed again, and disappeared. She brushed herself off, and looked around. 

The room she was in now really _was_ huge. It was full of towering bookshelves, like a giant library, but there were no books. The shelves were bare and dusty. In the center of the room was a desk and a giant chair, twice as tall as she was. Her steps echoed as she approached the desk. The chair swiveled around, revealing the thing sitting in it. If that counted as sitting. 

It was dark, constantly in motion, and blurred at the edges. It looked more like a cloud of dust than a solid creature. But looks could be deceiving. Aoko lobbed a trident at it. The weapon met no resistance as it sailed through the witch and struck the back of the chair. 

In this case, looks were dead right.

The cloud-witch swirled up out of its seat and flew at her. She tore her cape off and threw it at the witch, but it tore right through the net, unaffected. And still coming straight for her. Aoko decided on a tactical retreat.

She ran through the shelves, turning and winding every chance she got. She looked behind her, and didn't see the witch. She must have lost it. She hurried past another shelf when the witch came barreling out of the next aisle. Aoko created and threw another trident without hesitation. It punched a hole through the witch's belly (if it had one) but even as she hastened away from the witch, she saw the clouds rushing in to fill the gap. She couldn't even touch the witch. How the hell was she supposed to kill it? This was impossible.

Except that nothing was impossible, because she was magic. Whatever she needed to do, she could do, as long as she believed in herself. At least, she was pretty sure that was how it worked. She just needed to figure out what she needed to do, and then do it. But what could hurt a dust storm? What could do anything to a bunch of dirt and air?

She stopped running, thoughts still racing, and turned to face the witch. She pulled another trident from her cape, but instead of throwing it, she drove it into the ground at her feet. Water sprang from where it touched the ground, shooting up and away from her. The witch crashed into the impromptu fountain and recoiled. 

That was all Aoko needed. She pulled her cape off once again, and in the same motion, recovered her trident from the floor. The water stopped flowing, and she threw the cape. Instead of loosening, the weave got tighter as the cloth expanded, giving her not a net, but a heavy cloth tarp. It ballooned as it came down on the witch, and Aoko sprinted in for the kill. She struck with her weapon as hard as she could. It embedded itself in the bookshelf. Water sprayed everywhere, cascading down the shelves to the floor. Her cape quickly became soaked. Hell, she got pretty soaked too, but she held on to her weapon as dark, muddy water began to seep out from under the cloak. The cloth slowly began to deflate, until all that was left was a small bump. The bump didn't seem to go away. Aoko pulled her trident out of the shelf and walked over to whatever remained of the witch. Her sandals squelched. Water dripped from the shelves and pooled on the floor, spreading slowly away from her. Warily, she lifted the cape, readying herself to strike at the witch.

A small black bauble stood perfectly on its point. Aoko stared at it. It looked a little like a Christmas ornament, except that it pulsed with dark energy. She poked it with her weapon. It wobbled a little but did not fall over.

A breeze played across her face, and the labyrinth disintegrated in the wind. The room, the shelves, and the absolute mess she had made all blew away into the night. There were stars above her. The ground was dry. She was on a rooftop. She walked to the edge, and quickly backed away again when she saw the mass of people in front of the museum. It was probably best if no one saw her. At least not while she was wearing a silver cape. She transformed back into her regular clothes, slipped her soul gem back around her neck, and turned around. She saw the black ornament, still standing quietly at attention. It occurred to her that this was probably a grief seed. Hesitantly, she picked it up and pocketed it. She could ask Kyubey more about it later.

She found the fire escape where she had entered the labyrinth and hurried down the stairs. When she reached the bottom level, she jumped down to the ground, and ran back towards the museum, listening for cheers or sirens, anything that might tell her what had happened. She rounded a corner and nearly crashed into a couple walking in the opposite direction.

“Sorry!” she said in a rush. “Do you know what happened at the museum? I missed it.”

“It's bullshit,” said one of them. “The police just arrested the Kaitou Kid.”

Aoko could have kissed his stupid criminal sympathizer face. She settled for jumping, shouting, “Yes! Go dad!” and running off. She might have been a little loud, judging by how the two flinched back from her, but she couldn't care less what they thought. She left the confused couple to think what they wanted, and raced off into the crowd to find Keiko. She felt light as air, powerful as a tigress, as free as... someone who was not Kid, because that asshole was in the back of a police car! Ha.

She pushed her way through the crowd to where she'd left Keiko. She found her sitting by the fountain. (The sign was leaning against the fountain's edge, upside down and with the words facing in so no one could see what it said.) She was doing something on her phone. Aoko pushed the phone away and Keiko looked up, blinking.

“Aoko! You missed it!”

“I know,” Aoko lamented. “But some people back there said that he got arrested!”

“Not just arrested, unmasked!” said Keiko excitedly, waving her phone around. “A few people totally got pictures when they came outside, so I was looking online for them.”

“He's going to jail! Who cares what he looks like!”

“Pretty much everyone? I mean, I know you don't care about whether he's hot or whatever, but don't you at least want to know who he is?”

“Only if I could use that information to kick his ass. But it doesn't matter now, since he's going to jail.”

Keiko's nose was back in her phone. “But don't you want to know how he does all the amazing stuff he does?” Aoko doubted Kid would be telling the police any of that. He was supposed to be a _magician_ thief, after all, and magicians didn't tell their secrets. She knew that much. Keiko shook one hand out, a little like she was fanning herself and a little like she had burned her fingers, and bounced around on her toes. “I found them!”

“Is he hot?” Aoko inquired. “I bet he'll be the prettiest guy in _jail._ ” 

“Oh, be quiet!” said Keiko. “I can't really tell anyway, this is kind of bad quality. Oh wait, here's a better one. He's...” she stopped, and frowned at her phone.

“Still bad quality?”

“No, it's just – what do you think?” Keiko shoved the phone at her. “I mean, he looks a lot younger than he's supposed to be.”

“Yeah, but we've known that for...” Aoko's voice died in her throat. The picture was of two police officers walking Kid out of the museum. Kid was missing his monocle and top hat, and he was smiling for the camera, as if he was being escorted down the red carpet rather than to the backseat of a police car. It was hard to see on the tiny screen, but the thief was quite young. He looked around their age. In fact, he looked exactly like Kaito. Aoko swallowed and said, “What do I think about what?”

“Don't you think he looks kinda like Kaito?”

“Well yeah,” said Aoko. “But that's because he does look a bit like Kaito. My dad saw his face once and thought it was him. But Kaito has a clear alibi for at least two of Kid's appearances. It's just some guy who looks a bit similar.” Okay, nobody had been exactly sure that Kid looked like Kaito. Her dad had eventually concluded that Kid had been disguising as people he knew to bait him. But now she supposed that he had seen Kid's real face.

“Oh! Okay,” said Keiko awkwardly. “Damn, for a second I thought maybe it really was him! Imagine having a jewel thief in our own class!”

“That would be pretty crazy,” said Aoko, picking up her sign.

Keiko said something about having work to do, and they parted ways. Aoko shouldered her sign and navigated her way through the mass of people towards home. As soon as she was out of the crowd, she pulled out her phone and called Kaito. Not because she was paranoid or thought that Kaito could actually be Kid. Honestly. No, she was calling to gloat. After all the times he had announced the results of Kid's latest escapade in class, or claimed that her father couldn't do his job properly, he deserved to have this rubbed in his face a bit. There was absolutely no other reason that she was calling him. Even entertaining the thought was ridiculous.

“ _Hello?_ ” A familiar voice answered the phone. Relief bubbled up through her heart.

“Kaito! You're alright!” she said without thinking, and felt like an idiot. Okay, maybe she had been a _little_ worried. But that was perfectly justified, given the physical similarities. Hell, she wasn't even the first Nakamori to make this mistake.

“ _Well, I wouldn't say – hey!_ ” There was some scratchy noise close to the phone, and angry voices in the background. 

“Kaito?”

There was a pause, more noise, and another voice answered the phone. Another familiar voice. 

“ _Who is this?_ ” barked the voice. “ _If you are an accomplice you should turn yourself in now. Your cooperation with us may help you in court._ ”

Aoko gritted her teeth. “I'm not an accomplice, dad.”

The line went silent for a moment.

“ _...Aoko?_ ”


	3. The Curse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Judging by my current update rate, this fic should be finished in like, December. Thanks again to Eialyne for beta-reading.

So much for hoping.

“Is Kaito still there?” she asked, keeping her voice as level as possible.

“ _Is this really Aoko?_ ” said her father suspiciously. “ _Prove that it's you._ ”

“I just want to talk to Kaito.”

“ _This could be someone else, imitating your voice! There's no way for me to know for sure unless you give me some indication that it's really you._ ”

“Is Kaito the Kaitou Kid?” she demanded.

There was a short silence.

“ _That seems to be the case._ ”

The world was cracking. It was upside-down, and inside-out, and it was falling to pieces. Aoko wanted to sit down.

“ _...Aoko?_ ”

“He is such an idiot!” she shouted into the phone. “What the hell is he stealing diamonds for?!”

“ _Aoko... Aoko, you don't need to yell. Did you still want to talk to him?_ ” 

She wanted to yell at him. She wanted to scream and cry and shout and make Kaito wish he'd never even touched crime. She wanted him to be sorry. She also knew he wouldn't be, because that's the kind of idiot he was. He never thought about anything before or after he did it. He never considered whether something was a good idea or not, and he never showed remorse for his pranks. This would be no different.

“No,” she said. “It's okay.”

“ _I won't be home for a while._ ”

“I know.” She hung up.

She went home. She sat silently in the dining room, staring at her math book. It lay on the table, untouched. She wished that Kaito would call her to bug her about the homework, and it would be just like any other day. She would complain about how late it was and lecture him for always waiting until the last minute to do his work and he would argue and she would threaten to hang up and he would call her names and she would come up with worse ones for him. Her whole head felt like it was under pressure, and a certain wetness to her eyes promised that they were on the verge of betraying her. She didn't understand why he would do something like this. He was such an idiot, and this was his crowning achievement of ultimate stupid.

It was three in the morning when her dad got back. She rubbed her eyes and met him in the hall. He stopped and opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, his brow knotted and pained. She wrapped her arms around his middle and squeezed. Her father held her, and patted her back. The tears started to leak out again, and she tucked her head against his shoulder.

“Why did he do it?” she asked, and she choked on the words, more than she thought she would.

“He won't tell us,” said her dad. “The only thing I could get out of him was that Kuroba Toichi was the original Kid. He wanted us to know that.”

“So he's doing it because of his dad?” Aoko said haltingly through her tears. “That is so stupid.”

 

Aoko's life turned quickly into a media circus. It wasn't two days after the news had reported Kaitou Kid's true identity when they figured out that she had been his best friend. She learned this after school, when several reporters accosted her the moment she reached the gate.

“Nakamori Aoko!” one woman yelped at her, searching her jacket pockets for something and eventually pulling out a pen and a pad of paper. She desperately flipped through it for a blank page. “Kuroba Kaito is a friend of yours, isn't that right?”

“He was,” she said shortly.

“And you are Inspector Nakamori's daughter, aren't you?” said a sweaty man with a comb-over. “What do you think of his success in capturing the Kaitou Kid?”

“You say he was your friend!” said the woman. “How has your opinion of Kuroba changed with this shocking revelation?!”

“I'm not answering questions,” she insisted.

“Nakamori-chan,” said another woman, smoothly. Her smile was like a snake's. “Did you have any idea that your closest friend was a wanted thief?”

“Why would I ever think that Kaito was a thief?!” she said, angry. “If I had known that Kaito – that Kuroba-kun was the Kaitou Kid, I would have told my father! Leave me alone!”

Anger, however, wasn't about to drive them off. In fact, it seemed to encourage them. They only pressed closer and spoke louder, forcing her to step backwards, retreating under the battery attack of tabloid reporting.

“In retrospect, were there any clues that Kuroba was Kid?”

“How do you feel about him, Nakamori-chan? This must be extremely difficult for you.” 

“Did he behave suspiciously?”

“How close were you to Kuroba? Were the two of you dating?”

A hand steadied her back. “Nakamori-san doesn't have the time to answer your questions today. Excuse us.” Hakuba moved his hand from her back to her wrist and pulled her through the press. The reporters attempted to follow them, so they gradually increased their pace until they were practically sprinting away from the front gate. They were both very good runners. They turned the corner, and slowed as Hakuba let go of her wrist to gesture towards a car parked near them. “Would you allow me to offer you a ride home?”

“Yes please!” she said, and jogged to keep up with his brisk walk and long stride. They reached the car and he opened the rear door.

“Baaya, we'll be taking Nakamori-chan home.” The elderly woman driving the car said something in reply, and Hakuba held the door open for Aoko. She got in and he got in after her. Hakuba's Baaya greeted her and asked her for her address, which she gave. Aoko watched the reporters out the back window as they pulled away from the school.

“Thank you for saving me back there,” said Aoko.

“It was nothing,” said Hakuba. “I expect they'll be after me next.”

“Oh no.” Aoko winced. “Sorry about that.”

“It's alright, it was bound to happen sooner or later. There are already several bloggers who are theorizing that I knew it was Kuroba the entire time.”

Aoko scoffed. “What? How could you have known?” 

There was silence as they trundled away from the high school and turned on to the main street. A car behind them switched lanes to pass them, revving its engines the whole way. Another car sped after it.

“I suspected it,” admitted Hakuba. Aoko stared at him in shock.

“Then why didn't you tell my dad?! Why didn't you tell me?”

“I didn't have the evidence. And I did not go about getting it in the best way either – it would have been circumstantial at best. In the end my efforts only resulted in Kuroba getting a second strong alibi, this time with the entire Task Force as witnesses.” Hakuba smiled sadly. “I really thought I would be the one to catch him.”

It struck Aoko that the world felt very surreal. Hakuba wasn't supposed to be sad, and he certainly wasn't supposed to know more about Kaito than she did. Everything about everything was just... wrong.

“Maybe you would've, if things were different,” said Aoko.

“I doubt it. I overestimated my own abilities, and I underestimated the value of experience. I never believed that your father would be able to catch Kuroba. It was hubris on my part.”

Aoko felt uncomfortable. Would her father have been able to catch Kid? He had rarely even come close. Kid always seemed to be one step ahead of him. Not Kid, Kaito, she reminded herself. Kid was Kaito and she couldn't keep pretending that it wasn't really true, even to herself. And Kaito wasn't perfect. He was the same age as her – just a teenager! He would have messed up eventually. That was what happened to criminals. They made one false step and boom – they were behind bars. The same thing would have happened to Kaito. Maybe it would have been Hakuba who caught him, but he wouldn't have been able to run away forever. He would have been caught regardless of what she did. 

So why did she feel so guilty?

They stopped at her house, and she thanked Baaya again for the ride. She unlocked the door, and announced that she was home to the empty house. Aoko dropped her book bag by the door and went straight to her room. She fell on her bed and buried her face in her pillow. 

“ _Did your wish come true?_ ” said a voice in her head. She picked her head up and saw Kyubey, sitting on her desk. She leaped off her bed and picked him up, crushing him to her. He wriggled in her arms, and she hugged him more gently.

“It was Kaito,” she told him, sitting down on her bed again and resting her face in his fur. He became still. “Kaito was the Kaitou Kid.”

“ _I see. You made your wish based on a misunderstanding,_ ” said Kyubey.

“No.” That wasn't it. She had wished for her father to catch Kaitou Kid, and that was what happened. She hadn't misunderstood anything about what she wanted. “I just didn't care who Kid was. Maybe I should have.”

“ _But the fact that he was your friend doesn't change the fact that he was breaking your laws. It's overly sentimental to excuse him for his crimes just because you know him._ ”

“Do you think he would have gotten arrested anyway? If I hadn't wished for it?”

“ _There is no way to know for sure,_ ” said Kyubey, snaking out of her arms and pulling himself onto her shoulder. “ _But if you felt you had to wish for it, doesn't that answer your own question?_ ”

“I guess you're right.”

“ _But you shouldn't regret your actions. Who else would have caught him if you had not wished for his arrest?_ ”

Maybe Hakuba. Maybe no one. She changed the subject. “How did your errands go?”

“ _Very well. A girl I had talked to a few days ago decided on her wish and contracted._ ”

“That's great,” said Aoko. “You should introduce me to her. I don't know any other magical girls.”

“ _I don't know. Not everyone gets along. And she lives a little far from here._ ”

“Oh.”

“ _Are you ready to go fight a witch?_ ”

Her arms felt heavy, she was exhausted, and self-doubt chased itself around her head. She felt entirely awful, which was pretty much the opposite of ready. But her problems weren't more important than people's lives, so she just said, “Yeah, let's go.”

 

The next day was a lot quieter. Hakuba did not come to school, and Kaito's desk, of course, was also empty. Kyubey hadn't come to school with her either. He was busy again, he'd said. The new girl needed his help. Aoko sat in class, feeling kind of numb. She dutifully took notes during lectures and doodled her trident in the margins. Then she drew a scared fish next to it, about to be impaled. She wondered what Kaito would think of it, and that hurt for a moment. She turned the page over and resumed taking notes on the next one.

The bell for lunch rang, and a shadow fell over her desk. She looked up to see Akako's large dark eyes boring holes through her.

“You must be upset,” said Akako.

“What?”

“About Kuroba-kun.” Akako leaned all over her desk like she owned it.

“Well. I'm mad at him, but I'm not that upset.” Aoko looked down and slid her papers away from Akako, shuffling them into a neat pile in front of her. Akako drew herself up, both hands on Aoko's desk.

“Oh! I just thought, since you were best friends, you of all people would care what happened to him!” she said, her voice scathing, low and poisonous. It was like a knife to the gut. “Or do you only care about your father's obsession with a man who died eight years ago?”

Aoko clenched her hands tight around her sheaf of notes. “I care about Kaito! But I'm also angry that he did something this fucking stupid! Don't lecture me about friends when you haven't got any!” 

The words echoed painfully around them. Akako removed her hands from the desk and pushed the hair out of her face. Aoko realized that an awful lot of their classmates were staring at her. Why couldn't she have kept her voice down? Akako pressed one hand over her heart. “I wasn't trying to pick a fight. But I apologize for lashing out at you like that. It isn't your fault Kid was captured.” Her hand skated over Aoko's desk once more. “You must be going through a lot right now.” And with that, she turned and glided out of the room. 

Aoko stared after her, mouth hanging open. She wasn't sure what to think. She felt kind of awful for saying that Akako didn't have any friends, even if it was true. Akako had boys, and it was obvious from the way she barely acknowledged their existence that she didn't care about them.

Keiko slipped over to her, lunch in hand. “What is her problem?” she fumed as she took her usual seat.

“She's probably just upset. She cared a lot about Kaito,” said Aoko, finally tearing her eyes from the door and shoving her papers into her bag. “Do you think I should apologize?”

“No! She was the one who started it.”

“Right,” said Aoko. “Well, but I was also kind of rude to her, and she apologized.”

“You can, if you want, but I don't think it's really necessary,” said Keiko, looking at her strangely. Now that Aoko thought about it, she didn't apologize to people that often, and that wasn't because other people were never mad at her for stuff. It probably seemed weird that she was worrying about it. She dropped the subject, and engaged Keiko in conversation about stupid things of little importance.

Life was a steady cycle of sitting in class, pretending that she didn't care that the desk next to hers was empty, and hunting witches by night. Her father continued to put in extra hours, and on the rare occasion when he was home before dinner, she usually made up some excuse about studying at Keiko's and spent the evening chasing weak pulses of magic from one end of the city to the other. She was glad that she had become a magical girl, but she wondered if she would have chosen a different wish, if she had given herself more time to think about it. She wasn't sure whether she regretted the wish she had made – she believed that her wish had been on the side of justice, from an objective point of view, and if she hadn't made it, she probably would never have known that Kaito was Kid, but she missed him. She hadn't gotten her father back, and she had lost Kaito.

Her best friend was in jail, and it was her fault. Akako was wrong about that – it was entirely Aoko's fault that Kid had been captured. Even if he would have been caught anyway, she was the one who sent him to prison. All she had wanted was for her father to succeed, and she had hurt one of the people she cared about most in the world. It made her feel awful, and the most horrible thing was that she couldn't talk to anyone about it. There was only Kyubey, and she hadn't seen him since the day she'd been ambushed by those reporters.

She slaughtered familiars by the dozens. She wasn't sure where they were all coming from, considering how few witches she encountered, and they never really seemed to decrease in number. She also killed a couple more witches, and even ended up saving a couple of people who had gotten lost in the witches' labyrinths. It was pretty amazing to know she had saved people's lives. She had really helped them, and even if it didn't make up for hurting Kaito, it made her feel better about it all. It reminded her that being a magical girl was really about helping others. And it was nice to be around people who didn't know who her best friend was.

And she realized that maybe it wouldn't be the end of the world if she remembered that herself and forgot about her wish.


	4. Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so "finished in December" isn't happening because I don't like posting things without giving myself time to revise a lot, but you do get another chapter! Sorry if you've been waiting on updates, I just went through a pretty crazy semester and most of the writing I was doing was original stuff for class (or, you know, essays) and I didn't really have time for fanfiction. Thanks to Margaret for beta-reading and pointing out when Kaito was starting to sound less like Kaito and more like me.

The inside of the prison scared Aoko more than any witch's labyrinth. The barriers that witches created around themselves really weren't too bad once you got used to them. She had almost hoped that a familiar pulse of magic would make tonight's mission impossible. She could handle a witch. She could handle a thousand witches. Talking to her best friend? Nope. She had fantasized about all kinds of potential obstacles and distractions. What if her father discovered that she had sneaked out? What if Kyubey showed up and asked her what she was up to? What if Kaito wasn't even here?

She walked past a guard. Hesitating, she backtracked a few steps and made a face at him, scrunching up her nose and sticking out her tongue. He blinked, and continued staring at the wall behind her. Satisfied, she turned to the barred door next to him. Glancing back at him, she pulled the bars out of place like they were made of taffy instead of steel, until there was a gap big enough for her to squeeze through. When she let go of the bars, they snapped back into place without making a sound, and the guard hadn't noticed a thing.

Aoko wasn't quite sure how she had managed it, but she had discovered that she could turn invisible. She'd tested it by standing in between her father and the television, and also by attempting to take a picture of herself. She was undetectable.

She wormed her way through a second door, and found herself in a hallway lined with cells on both sides. The lights were dim, but it was not by any stretch of the imagination dark. With no idea where Kaito was being kept, she decided to look into every cell. Most of the inmates she saw were in bed, asleep, although a few were staring at the ceiling or muttering to themselves. She didn't see anyone who looked like Kaito, and by the time she had reached the end of the hall, she was frustrated, angry, and more than a little creeped out. The prisoners couldn't see her, but that just made it even more weird that she could watch them. It was like being in a very depressing zoo. She balled her hands into fists and walked faster. She was going to talk to Kaito whether he liked it or not, and the last thing she wanted was for the damn building to get in the way. She wrenched open the door into the next hallway, and it closed and re-locked itself behind her.

This hallway was different. For one thing, all the cells seemed to be empty. She nearly walked right out again, when she heard a familiar _thwip-thwip-thwip_ coming from farther down the hall. She approached the sound, and about halfway down the hall discovered the one occupied cell. Kaito was lying on a simple cot in the cell, idly sliding cards from one hand to the other, flipping them over his fingers, and delivering them to the other side of the deck. Aoko wondered if he had been allowed to keep the cards or if he just sneaked them in somehow.

He looked tired, tense and maybe skinnier than Aoko remembered him being. She felt a twinge of guilt. She took a deep breath, and imagined that she was invisible to everyone and everything all over again, except Kaito. She imagined he could see her, but only he could see her. The blood pounded in her head. Imagining had never been quite this much work before.

He turned his head very fast and a few cards shot out of his hands. He grabbed them out of thin air, tossing them back on top of the deck as if that was what he had meant to do all along.

“Aoko?” he breathed, sitting up. “What the hell are they putting in my food?”

Aoko forgot how all her speeches and tirades had started, and just said, “Hey.”

Kaito wasn't very often speechless. He never really shut up, normally, even though he was usually just talking to himself. But now his mouth opened and no sound came out. “What?” he said finally, his voice a squeak.

“I thought I would... visit you,” said Aoko. What was she saying? She was being stupid and sentimental and where had all of her anger gone? She didn't know what to say. “What's it like in here? Is it awful?”

“Uh,” he said.

“Of course it is, what am I saying!” Aoko felt like an idiot. And for some reason she was still talking. “You're not on vacation, you're... well.” She trailed off awkwardly, and stewed in the feeling of never knowing the right things to say at the right times.

“It's fine,” Kaito jumped in, back to his old self. Always ready for anything. He was on his feet, with his head held high and his shoulders relaxed. “I mean, the food's awful, but I'm pretty much a celebrity. Nobody really messes with me. Or at least I don't get harassed nearly as much as I did in school, between you, Akako, and Hakuba.” He edged closer to the bars like he was afraid she would disappear. “This is actually you, right? Like actually.”

“Actually,” she said, smiling despite herself.

“Okay.” He reached the bars and leaned against them, eyes traveling up and down very carefully and judiciously. Observing, evaluating. “In that case, what the hell are you wearing?”

She made a snooty face and looked down her nose at him. “I am a magical girl. This is what magical girls wear.”

Kaito gaped at her. For a second she thought he was going to have trouble talking again. It was a foolish thing to think about Kaito. “Since when?!” 

“All magical girls have fabulous costumes. Do you even watch TV at all?”

“No, I mean since when are you a magical girl?” said Kaito.

“You're not the only one who has secrets!” Aoko didn't mean for that to come out as barbed as it did. The worst part was that Kaito did not laugh it off, or demand details, or tease her about it. He just looked away, and went uncomfortably silent. The way he held himself was still very relaxed, almost elegant, but there was something careful and calculating about that now. Aoko hated when he got like this, all the same but somehow colder. “I am still waiting for an explanation on yours,” Aoko added, because Kaito's secrets were what they were supposed to be talking about anyway.

“I'm sorry?” Kaito offered, but Aoko interrupted.

“Are you actually?”

“Not for doing any of it,” admitted Kaito. “But I'm sorry I had to. And I'm sorry for all the crap I put your father through. He was a good sport about most of it, though.”

Aoko was indignant. “That is not a real apology.”

Kaito smiled bitterly and held on to the bars of his cell. “Nope. But if I was really sorry for everything, then I would have to have had pretty stupid reasons for doing it in the first place, right?” He strung it all together like this argument had come to him in an epiphany. Pure inspiration radiated from him. This was also the stupidest logic that she had ever heard, and that was saying something, because Kaito was by definition alogical.

“Like they aren't stupid reasons,” said Aoko.

“I bet they are at least as good as your reasons for whatever it is you're doing,” he said, glancing at her armored shoulder, where her soul gem gleamed, dull in the low light.

Aoko could have breathed fire (the thing is, she probably could, too, if she had bothered to figure out how). She could not believe Kaito would even dare to suggest that being a thief was somehow equivalent to being a superhero! “You know nothing about this! I've saved people's lives!”

“So have I!” said Kaito. “You know that I have to deal with criminals a lot worse than myself at some of my performances. And the police don't know half of it.”

“Half of what?” asked Aoko.

“I can't tell you that!”

“That is such bullshit!” said Aoko, disgusted. “So you swear you have reasons, you just can't tell me what they are.”

Kaito showed her his palms, like he was doing a magic trick, and was trying to pretend that her card wasn't just behind his hand. “Maybe I do, and maybe I can't!”

“I can't believe I actually expected you to tell me anything,” said Aoko, scathing. “I mean, it's not like we're friends or anything!”

Kaito looked sad. His face was pale in the dim florescent light. “Are we?”

“What?”

“Are we still friends?”

Aoko's stomach twisted in on itself, and she hastened to reassure him. “Of course we're friends!”

Kaito fit his hand through the bars, and held her own. She squeezed his fingers a bit.

“I'm sorry I hurt you,” said Kaito.

“You never hurt me,” scoffed Aoko. “Apologize to all those people you stole from.”

Kaito was reluctant. Sullen, even. “A lot of them got their stuff back,” he pointed out. “And half the ones who didn't weren't the legitimate owners in the first place.”

“Okay, but what about the rest?” said Aoko. “You are so full of crap.”

“I may have taken some liberties,” admitted Kaito. “But for a thief, I think I have behaved admirably.”

“Hm.” As much as she hated it, he had a point. There were a lot criminals who were a lot worse than Kid, and plenty of them were still free. At the same time, she doubted that Kaito realized the consequences of his actions. It wasn't ever just a matter of her dad chasing him around a bit. It wasn't a game. It was breaking and entering, assault, forced administration of sedatives and depressants, and a huge amount of property damage. It was high costs in security and upheaval in the lives of whoever owned his most recent target. It was ridiculous, and it was not okay. 

“Do you hate me?”

“No,” said Aoko, surprising herself with how sure she was. “But I am very disappointed in you,” she informed him, keeping her tone as severe as she could muster.

“Well, I'm sorry for being a disappointment, then,” said Kaito, cracking a grin.

Aoko let go of his hand. “I'm sorry, too.”

“For what?”

“I don't want you to be here,” she said. “You look like hell.”

“Thank you,” said Kaito in his best suave voice, which just made him sound stupid.

“I thought I would want you to be here, after everything you've done,” Aoko explained. “I definitely wanted you to be locked up in here forever before I knew it was you. But now I just want you to be back at school. And I want things back to normal, even if that meant you were back to stealing. I mean, I don't want you to go back to stealing, but I would rather have you out and doing that than locked up in here. I mean, it would still be awful. I would definitely hate it. But it would be better, by a slim margin.”

“Wow, thanks. It is good to know that my best friend has a slight preference for me not spending the rest of my life in jail. That is so reassuring.”

“Shut up!” said Aoko. “I miss you, okay? And I hate that I would rather have you out and breaking the law all over again, because it's so selfish. Stealing isn't okay. What you were doing wasn't okay.”

Kaito didn't defend himself any further. “How did you get in here?”

“Magic,” Aoko educated him.

“Right,” said Kaito. “Does Koizumi have anything to do with this?”

Aoko had no idea what he was talking about. “Why would she?”

“I'm pretty sure she's a witch,” Kaito said this like he was confiding some kind of top secret information to her. He seemed so incredibly earnest about it, too.

Aoko laughed out loud. “I'm pretty sure she's not!”

Kaito stood up a little straighter and pressed his forehead against one of the horizontal bars. He looked kind of offended. It was partly mock offense, but at its core it was honest, unguarded. Aoko realized that he really had been serious. “What makes you so sure?”

“Witches are not that pretty,” said Aoko.

“That's what you think! Because witches are old and green and have warts. But there's definitely something weird about her.”

“Well of course she's going to act weird around _you._ ” Aoko stopped herself. She didn't need to be telling Kaito that Akako had a crush on him. It was none of her business. “But witches don't look like people at all. You wouldn't even be able to see one unless it was about to kill you!”

“I'm not convinced that Koizumi isn't always about to kill me.”

Aoko smiled in spite of herself. “You are so melodramatic.”

“It's my job to be melodramatic. I don't see you picking up the slack.”

“Okay, fine.” Aoko hesitated, made up her mind, and slid open the door to his cell. It opened as easily as if it had been unlocked. No alarms sounded. No guards came running. She offered him a hand in true dramatic rescue style. “Come with me. I'm busting you out.”

Kaito stared at her. “You realize this is against the law, right? If anyone found out it was you that let me out. Hell, there are cameras around here and that isn't the best disguise.”

“It won't be a problem. Nobody can see me. _Magic._ ”

“I just wouldn't blame you if you closed the door and left me here.”

“I know you wouldn't,” said Aoko, a knot in her throat.

Kaito still hesitated. “What if-”

“Just come on!” she exploded, furious. “Or do you want to stay here?!”

Kaito grinned, and bounced out of his cell. “How long did it take you to get in here?”

“Twenty minutes, if you include all the time I wasted figuring out where they'd put you.”

“Bet I can get us out in two.” Kaito grabbed her hand, and they were off, down the hall. Doors sprang open for them and closed after they had passed. Aoko imagined the both of them invisible, but it seemed harder to concentrate on than before. Maybe because they were two people? When it had just been her it had been a thought in the back of her mind, something that would still be true even if she forgot about it for a moment. Now she felt like she had to keep it going, that she had to be sure nobody and nothing could see them.

Still, it was wonderful to be running hand in hand with Kaito, fast and silent and high on possibility. She kept pace with him without trouble, as they ran past guards and cameras and around corners, between steel bars that bent out of the way as they passed and sprung back into place behind them, and finally (after reassuring Kaito that it wouldn't kill him) straight through the outer wall of the facility. They kept running, under blinding white streetlights, until they had left the prison far behind. Kaito slowed, panting, and pulled her off the road. The ground sloped into a ditch and then rose again. The other side was thick with trees. They only stopped once the road was no longer visible from the forest. Kaito sat on the ground with a thump. He was breathing hard. Aoko was barely winded, although she could feel sweat on her forehead. She wiped it off with her bare right arm. It was cold.

“Haha, that was great!” said Kaito. “I still can't believe that just happened.”

Aoko touched the gem set into her armor. It melted back into its familiar pendant form, and her costume flowed back into ordinary clothes, a dark hooded sweatshirt and long pants. It wasn't the kind of thing she normally wore, but she hadn't wanted to be recognizable. She strung her soul gem back around her neck. It was too dark in the forest to see its color properly. She tucked it under her shirt.

She remained standing as she waited for Kaito to get his breath back. The canopy above them was black against black. Pinpricks of starlight shone through in some places, softly illuminating the forest around them. “What are you going to do now?” she asked.

“Don't know,” he admitted.

“Just don't go back to being Kid,” said Aoko.

“Of course not,” he said, like this was obvious. “Everyone knows who Kid is now.”

Aoko reached out blindly around waist level in the dark and managed to hit him across the back of the head. “I mean, don't steal!”

“Okay! Geez, ow.” He picked himself up off the ground, brushing himself off from the sound of it. “I won't steal unless I have to.”

Furious, Aoko got right in his face and – walked right into him. She took a step back, located him with her hands, and poked him in the chest. “That's not what I said! Don't steal, period!”

“Don't yell!” said Kaito. 

“Say you won't steal!” insisted Aoko.

“No.” Kaito's face was unreadable in the darkness, but perhaps if it had been light she wouldn't have been any better off. When he glanced to the side, back the way they had came, the silhouette of his brow and chin was firm, and his voice was resolute. Something moved, and she realized he was groping awkwardly around his own chest, doing his best to avoid her own. He caught hold of her finger. “I mean, I'd rather not keep lying to you. If that's all right with you. Thank you for getting me out of there.”

They were holding hands, in a strange way. Aoko wondered what would happen if she kissed him and then berated herself for thinking about such stupid things. “Maybe I shouldn't have.”

“Would've, should've, could've! It's too late for that!” said Kaito lightly. “Can you get back home okay?”

“Of course I can!” Aoko scoffed at him. 

“Cool! I'll see you later!” he said, and let go of her hand. There was a crunch of leaves and then silence. She reached out, but he was gone. Darkness surrounded her.

“See you.” Her voice sounded too loud to her own ears. A response floated back through the trees.

“Don't count on it!” It was mocking, insensitive, and exactly what she needed to go back to being mad at Kaito. She hoped he tripped in the dark or got caught jay-walking. His fate was out of her hands, and now that it was and they were probably even, she regretted not shouting at him a bit more. 

The night pressed in around her. There was no wind to rustle the leaves on the trees and the canopy overhead blotted out the stars. She got the distinct feelings that she would disappear with the sunrise if she was still outside that late, and while she was not superstitious, she decided to go home, just to be sure.


	5. The Witch

Her street was dead silent, and striped in patches of light and dark between the street lamps. It felt eerie, like nobody actually lived there, and the neighborhood was abandoned. The only noise was the wind in the hedges in front of her neighbor's house, which scraped against the fence when the breeze picked up. Aoko crept silently down the road to her own house, and let herself in the front door, turning the knob carefully and slowly pushing the door open, to avoid making any noise.

Her father did not notice her come back to the house, or slip down the hall to her room. He was sound asleep, exhausted from a long day of work. He may have also owed his deep slumber to the simple fact that his daughter wished it to be so, but Aoko wasn't sure. It was hard to find the find the border between magic and reality sometimes, between what was already and what she had done.

It was the same with Kaito. She had set him free, yes, but he would have been free if it weren't for her interference in the first place. As far as he knew, she had helped him, but she had already betrayed him, and there was no way she knew to set that right. Not that she knew if she wanted to make it right, or what right was in this situation. In helping him, she had betrayed her father as well as well as her friend, and there was no way she could make both of them happy. In fact, she had only made things worse for both of them by trying.

She opened the door to her room with great care, not making a sound even as she latched it behind her. She collapsed on to her bed with a great sigh. However she felt about it, Kaito was out. Mission accomplished! That was something. Feelings could wait.

“ _So you went back on your wish,_ ” said a voice in her mind and on top of her dresser. Aoko rolled over in bed, and let her head loll to the side to look at Kyubey. He was posed in front of her collection of cute things and trinkets, elegant and alert. He made the cell phone charms and erasers look childish and small. 

“It wasn't a very good wish.”

“ _I couldn't say,_ ” said Kyubey. “ _It was a good wish for me, I think. It was very magical._ ”

“Do you think what I did was wrong?” asked Aoko.

“ _By the laws of your people, yes,_ ” said Kyubey. “ _Does that matter to you?_ ”

“But what do you think?” she pressed.

Kyubey considered this, pawing at a pretty rock she had found once on the way to school when she was little. It was white and glittered in the light, and she had been convinced that it was valuable, but when she asked if it was a gem her mother just laughed and said that it was quartz. Some kinds were valuable, but this one wasn't worth anything – it just liked to show off.

“ _You are part of something much greater than yourself,_ ” he told her. “ _A project to save the universe. If a few rules, developed by primitive lifeforms, are broken in the process, what does it matter?_ ”

“The universe?” asked Aoko, unable to really comprehend the scale of that. “Are there witches on other planets?”

“ _More than you could count!_ ” said Kyubey.

“Okay well, I'm not a terrible person,” said Aoko, although she wasn't sure she entirely believed it. “But I already knew that. That doesn't make what I just did or my wish right or wrong or anything.”

“ _Perhaps it doesn't,_ ” admitted Kyubey. “ _But you can make anything whatever right or wrong you want it to be, can't you?_ ”

“That's not how it works!”

“ _It seems I have misunderstood human culture again,_ ” said Kyubey, batting his tail about and shrinking down into his haunches. “ _Are you offended?_ ”

“It's fine,” said Aoko. A yawn caught her by surprise. She was dead tired. “It was good to talk to you, but I should really get some rest.”

“ _You want to be alone,_ ” said Kyubey. “ _I will go._ ”

That wasn't really true, but she couldn't deal with Kyubey right now. He was nice enough – it was just so frustrating to try to explain human values to him. He just didn't understand people at all. And yet, she had been worried that if she told him of her plan beforehand, he would have talked her out of it. Even now, all she could do was ask him if he thought it was right, because she couldn't begin to tell him why she had done it. And now that she had, her most pressing thought was not actually the morality of her actions, but whether or not she would ever see Kaito again.

She stayed wide awake for hours that night, despite an overwhelming sense of exhaustion that went deeper than she fully understood. She just kept turning everything over in her head, before eventually passing into a fretful sleep.

 

She awoke to shouting. Her father was on the phone in the living room, possibly trying to deafen whoever was on the other end. Aoko stayed under the covers, listening.

“You don't know?! Then go find out, or it'll be someone's badge, and it won't be mine!” There was a pause, before her father erupted again. “You think we can tell the public that we have no idea how he got away? That was high security! If Kid can break out, who's to say anybody else can't?” Another pause. “Just try telling that to the press, and see what happens.” He wasn't shouting as loud, and Aoko had to strain to catch the end of the conversation. “No, we'll keep in under wraps for now. I'll be over right away.”

Aoko tried not to think of how her father would react if he found out about her involvement in Kid's escape. He'd be furious, that was obvious. Maybe he would try to arrest her, or disown her. Probably disown, then arrest? No, the arrest would come first. Personal matters could wait.

She heard the front door slam. She crawled out of bed, and opened her door very cautiously, to peek through the hall and into the living room. It was quiet. Her father had left.

She returned to her room and dressed herself in her school uniform. She didn't really feel like going to school, but she didn't want to be at home, either. She skipped breakfast. She wasn't really hungry. In fact, she felt kind of sick, although she couldn't have said what was wrong, if someone had asked. She grabbed her book-bag and left the house in a hurry. She didn't look back as she walked the familiar route to school. The morning was still and bright. The sun had only barely risen, and most people were still dragging themselves out of bed or making coffee.

She arrived at school early, long before the first bell would ring. She went up to her classroom anyway, which was thankfully already unlocked. She was the first one there, but she had barely sat down and dropped her bag next to her desk when the door opened and Keiko entered the room. Aoko was surprised to see her, and judging from her expression, Keiko felt just the same.

“Aoko!”

“Hey,” she said weakly.

“What are you doing here so early?” Keiko asked. She looked very tired, and immediately went for her desk, where she started dumping her books onto its surface. She started rifling through her folders, pulling out papers. She dropped a couple pages and stooped to recover them.

“I just... left early,” said Aoko, simultaneously wanting to bare her problems before her friend and pretend that nothing had happened. “You?”

“My house is so noisy in the mornings,” Keiko complained. “And I needed to study for our test. I figured nobody would be here yet.”

“We have a test?” said Aoko, not really processing the fact. A reality where tests were the most of her worries was so far away that it seemed impossible that she had ever been concerned about tests at all.

“History, remember? Do you want to study too?”

“No, I – I just need to think, is all,” said Aoko, distracted. “Although I guess everyone else will be here soon.”

There was a moment of silence as Keiko stopped unearthing erasers from her bag to look at Aoko. “Should I go to the library?”

“What?” Aoko was confused. “Oh, if you want.” Keiko nodded and began packing her stuff back up. Aoko wasn't sure if she had been asking if Aoko wanted her to go to the library, or if it would be easier to study in the library, or if their classmates would be here too soon for her to get any studying done at all. She wanted to tell her to stay, but she just hoped that Keiko would notice something was wrong and ask her. Keiko finished putting her things away, and hurried out of the room. All she said on her way out was that she would see Aoko in their first class.

Aoko felt very alone. She folded her arms and buried her head in them, trying not to cry.

She was not alone for long, though. The door slid open once more, and she looked up, half-hoping that Keiko was back. But it was not Keiko in the door. It was Akako.

“Nakamori-chan,” she said coldly.

“Good morning,” said Aoko, her voice wobbling.

“We have something to discuss,” said Akako.

“We do?”

“Yes.” Akako swept her head towards the door. “But I would rather not be interrupted by our classmates.” She looked expectantly at Aoko, as if her cooperation were assured, a non-issue. Aoko found this aggravating, but stood up anyway, leaving her bag at her desk.

Aoko followed Akako out of the room, wondering what on earth she could want. With a pang of guilt, she remembered the conversation they'd had shortly after Kaito's arrest. She had been really rude, and she'd never apologized. Maybe Akako was still mad about that? They climbed the empty stairs to the equally abandoned roof. Stepping outside, the wind blew her hair into her face and whipped Akako's behind her head dramatically. It was a bit chilly, but nothing awful.

“Nakamori Aoko,” began Akako. “You are a selfish idiot meddling with power, without the slightest ability to take a hint.”

Aoko was stunned. “I don't know what you're talking about!”

“Then I will elaborate,” said Akako, with ice in her voice and fire in her eyes. “You wished for Kuroba to go to jail. You exchanged your best friend for magic powers. Nakamori, you are the reason Kaito was caught. And I cannot forgive you for that.”

It was all true, of course. Aoko didn't know how she knew, but Akako was right, and it had been selfish of her. But that didn't immediately sink in. Without really thinking about it, she blurted, “Akako, are you also a magical girl?”

Akako's eyes drilled into hers. There was a certain disdain there that Aoko was sure no one else could come close to replicating. Akako didn't simply think herself better than everyone else – she knew she was. Aoko felt very small around her, and that wasn't a feeling she was used to. But Akako took a deep breath, flipped her hair out of her face, and said, “I am the same as you.”

Aoko balled her hands into fists and spoke slowly, remorsefully. “That's – I've wanted to meet another magical girl for so long. Or just talk to anyone. You're right. I didn't know any better, but I should've never wished for what I did.”

Akako narrowed her eyes. “I did not expect you to regret your wish,” she admitted.

“I've... been thinking about it a lot,” said Aoko.

“Then perhaps I should retract my accusation.”

“No! You shouldn't! You're right, I traded in Kaito for some fancy clothes and a giant fork. I'm awful.”

Akako stared at her, but did not offer counterargument. She turned thoughtful, and then her eyes sharpened again. “Show me your soul gem.”

Aoko's uneven breath quickened. She was caught off guard. She didn't understand what Akako could possibly want with her soul gem, but she pulled the chain out of her shirt, and held it up for both of them to see. It was so dark – still a deep blue, but like there was a black storm boiling inside. It absorbed more light than it shed. But Aoko wasn't watching it. Instead she looked at Akako, searching for some significance to all this. She didn't find it.

“We all make mistakes,” said Akako, her voice strangely flat and her face inscrutable. Aoko thought that maybe she was angry again. “Some more permanent than others.”

Aoko dropped the chain, and her soul gem rested on the outside of her uniform. “I know. But Kaito's life is ruined.” Tears pushed at the edges of her eyes. “It's all my fault.”

Akako's face twitched. “Don't say that,” she ordered. The command was issued in such a manner that it was not meant to ever be questioned. Disobedience was unthinkable, and only a fool would contradict her. It was all very funny, to be bossed around by a girl in her homeroom like they were queen and subject, not classmates.

Aoko laughed, the tears going everywhere. “But you were just saying it! You just said it, it's my fault.”

“Stop it. A witch does not cry.” Akako seemed frustrated with her, and Aoko could hardly blame her for that, when she was frustrated with herself! She couldn't do anything right. She had messed everything up, at every opportunity. She wondered why she had even tried in the first place.

“I'm not – I'm not a witch,” said Aoko, choking on the words. “I'm just a girl.”

“We are all witches,” said Akako. “Every last one of us.” It was like a curious gospel had been spoken. Akako was the unlikely prophet, and the world would never be quite the same.

“Ah,” said Aoko, tears running down her face. “That makes sense.”

When she really thought about it, she didn't deserve to be a magical girl at all, with such a selfish wish. She had been so stupid. She only had herself to blame for her father's absence, Kaito's disappearance, Keiko's casual desertion. She cried harder than she could remember ever crying about anything, as every bad thing in the world seamlessly attached itself to her own actions. Out of everyone, the only person that did not leave was Akako, who she barely knew, and who blamed her for everything. 

Akako held herself tense, ready, watching her with tired eyes, and stayed by her side, waiting. Aoko cried until she could not cry anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading Make a Wish. Aoko's story ends here, but others continue. Many thanks to Margaret for beta-reading this chapter.


End file.
